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by screechfox



Series: Author's Favourites [15]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist Jonathan Sims, Character Study, Monster Jonathan Sims, Other, Post-Episode 164, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23859349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: It’s not a surprise when the door appears again, a sickly yellow that bleeds into the wilted grass.(The surprise is who steps across the threshold when the door creaks open.)
Relationships: Helen/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Michael/Jonathan Sims
Series: Author's Favourites [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829980
Comments: 44
Kudos: 261





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**Author's Note:**

> listen. anyone who knows me knows that as soon as jon and helen get airtime together, i go wild. i've been trying to play with the base concept of this fic since november and 164 finally made it click!
> 
> thank you to michael for beta-reading this! <3

It’s not a surprise when the door appears again, a sickly yellow that bleeds into the wilted grass. 

Jon doesn’t bother looking; the Spiral curls at the edge of his awareness as though he’s holding sugar on his tongue until it burns. Sweetly acidic, a sharp, sad pain he can’t help but lean into.

Martin’s head rests on Jon’s lap — another ache he can’t let go of. Jon runs a hand through his hair as though that will do anything to soothe the nightmares that torment Martin as he sleeps. He’d wanted to rest, though Jon isn’t sure if that was minutes or months ago.

“I’m not knocking,” Jon says, without looking up. “I don’t think you’d like what it would do to you.”

The door opens slowly, the creak of its hinges lilting like a laugh.

“Don’t be so sure, Archivist,” says Michael’s voice.

Jon’s head snaps up — Martin whimpers, still-sleeping, at the sudden movement. 

It’s unmistakably Michael who stands in the threshold, blond hair falling over his shoulders in endless waves. He waves, and Jon can see past the illusion of soft fingers to the sharp fractals beneath. The lines around Michael’s eyes are wrinkled in discomfort, but he giggles all the same.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

Jon doesn’t even bother dignifying that with an answer. 

Michael laughs again, stepping out of the doorway and into the blighted wasteland. They stand on the borders of the Filth’s domain — a living, seething thing that spreads ever-outwards. Michael wrinkles his nose at the smell, but seems otherwise unbothered.

“Helen told you that complication isn’t the same thing as falsehood,” Michael says, voice sharp with matter-of-fact disdain. “Perhaps I am a complication that neither you or she foresaw, but all the same: I am Michael, for all my sins; she is Helen, and it suits her as much as anything can suit us; we are the Distortion, if you  _ must _ give us a name.”

“Right,” Jon murmurs, when he’s managed to unearth his voice. “That makes sense.”

Michael gasps in horror, pressing a hand to his chest as though pained. The melodramatics are almost enough to make Jon smile.

These days, it’s child’s play to look into the heart of the Distortion. Through the focusing lenses of the Panopticon, Jon searches those twisting hallways and finds— complication, yes, but complication with the unfortunate ring of truth. Michael and Helen and the Distortion are so very tangled together; a knot of free will and outside impulse that the Web would be proud of.

Jon sighs, centering himself on Michael’s face. There’s a trail of blood running from his nose, and his skin has gone very pale. Strange that the illusion shifts to match the damage Jon does.

“Well,” Michael begins, his voice turned tight with pain. “I knew you would be stronger, but—” He lets out a little giggle, almost hysterical. “You really are better than Gertrude ever was. She would hate it.” Michael laughs again, a weak note of triumph to the thin sound of his amusement.

“I imagine she would.”

Jon lets out a sigh. With all the gentleness he can muster, he shifts Martin from his lap, slipping off his jacket so Martin has some kind of softness to rest his head on. He strokes Martin’s hair once more, then he stands up, meeting Michael’s eyes with an unblinking gaze.

“Why are you here?”

“Why not? It’s hard to come across the unexpected these days; any novelty is much appreciated.”

“Fine. Why are  _ you _ here?” Jon suffuses the question with power this time, watching in fascination as Michael stumbles backwards, knuckles white where they grip the doorframe.

“To tell you the honest truth—” Jon’s dry laugh goes ignored, “—I don’t know, Archivist.”

“I could find out,” Jon suggests idly. Michael skitters backwards as though proximity will have any effect on whether Jon can see into the core of his being. It’s a refreshing novelty to be the one scaring the monsters — though really, Jon knows he’s no better at this point.

“That won’t be necessary,” Michael assures him, his sing-song tones turned pitchy with nervous energy. “My nature has always been a mystery, even to me, and I like it that way.”

Jon nods, and they both know he’s only relenting because he doesn’t actually care. Michael’s hands flutter like butterfly wings, his terror shifting back into excitement. Jon has to wonder why the Distortion even feels fear — there’s no body for adrenaline to course through, and there’s nearly nothing in this world that can harm it. Perhaps Jon has just answered his own question; his gaze is a knife to Michael’s throat, and delusions drip from the wound.

“Do you have something you want to say?” Jon asks at last, the words absent of force.

Humming, Michael grins. His teeth are too many, too sharp, but it’s nothing Jon hasn’t seen before.

“In hindsight, I was wrong to try and kill you. The Archives won, unfortunately, but so did we all. If I’d suspected…” Michael lets out an echoing sigh, blowing a strand of hair out of its eyes. “I suppose that’s one benefit to being replaced; Helen is a little less impulsive than I was.”

That wording makes Jon’s mouth frown. He maps the shape of Michael’s ever-shifting eyes, feeling the unreality of the gaze looking back at him.

“You’re a figment,” Jon says, the words rising to his tongue without his say-so. “An echo of an echo, a shadow cast on the wall. The embodiment of false awakening, of believing in a normality that will never be again. The Distortion is dreaming, and you’re the nightmare—  _ being you _ is the nightmare.”

Even as Michael turns pale again, his cheeks flush and his mouth spreads wide in admiration.

“Poetic, isn’t it?”

“So much is. Even if it really shouldn’t be.”

Michael cackles, and the bleeding-ears cacophony is beautiful. It’s hard to remember that he used to hate it when its impossibility sounds like a symphony of cruel potential.

As Michael laughs, Martin’s dreams shift into optical illusions built from curls of bismuth. Those are beautiful too, Martin’s defiance reflected in spiralling iridescence. Jon knows better than to try to wake him. At any rate, better the Spiral than the Lonely — neither is merciful, but Jon and Martin have both had more than enough of the toll that Forsaken incurs on those touched by it.

With a conflicted sigh, Jon runs a hand through his hair. Better to refocus on the here and now — not that either of those concepts are as solid as they once used to be.

“If you’re here, where’s Helen?” Jon asks.

He could know— but it would upset Martin if he looked too far. Besides, this feels like small talk.

“I don’t know that she’s anywhere,” Michael remarks, humming to himself. “If she is me, then I am not, so perhaps it’s the same the other way around. Helen is not, and I am.” His head tilts, his expression a parody of contemplation. “Or perhaps she is simply asleep. Dreaming, as you say.”

“But she’s isn’t… somewhere else.”

“No.” Michael casts a displeased glance over his own hands. His fingertips dig into his skin again and again, repetitive and thoughtless. “Even now, there is only one of us.”

“Probably for the best,” Jon comments, a hint of dark humour seeping through the cracks. “I don’t think you’d get along with each other.”

When Michael dissolves into giggles, it’s rather literal. His form turns incoherent — Picasso meets Escher, moving in a way that violates every relevant law of physics — and if Jon’s eyes weren’t so used to the myriad nonsense horrors of this world, Michael would hurt to look at.

Jon raises an eyebrow and waits for the amusement to pass.

“Yes!” Michael crows at last. His eyes are glittering, diamonds falling like tears down his cheeks. “Yes, you’re quite right about that. It would be… very messy.”

The door creaks where it stands, a little of the paint peeling from its corners. The flicker of alarm on Michael’s face is brief enough that, once, Jon might have thought his eyes were playing tricks. Michael’s smile reasserts itself quickly enough, sharp as broken glass.

“At any rate, why all of the curiosity? Would it be easier if I were Helen, dear Archivist? Do you prefer your mistakes, or those of your predecessor?”

Anger coils in Jon’s stomach, the same cold, measured fury that killed Peter Lukas. There’s static on his tongue as he reaches for an argument — it vanishes as soon as he remembers Martin, asleep on the floor. It’s not worth it.

_ “Helen _ wanted to be my friend,” Jon says instead, sighing. “Whatever that actually means for her.”

“I wanted to be your friend too. Then I tried to kill you — in hindsight, a strategic miscalculation — and Helen became me! But does any of that preclude our friendship?”

Jon scoffs, shaking his head.

“Given that track record, I imagine Helen will try to kill me soon too.”

"Oh, Jon," Michael says in Helen's cloyingly teasing tones. "Nothing can kill you now."

The shift from Michael to Helen is like paint colours bleeding into each other; Jon hardly realises that it’s happening until it’s over. Helen stares back at him, smoothing down her skirt with a faint air of displeasure. There’s still a trail of blood beneath her nose, but she ignores it.

“Well, that wasn’t how I’d planned on spending my evening.”

“I’m fairly sure it’s noon,” Jon comments mildly. The sun is high in the sky, hot enough to blight any harvest with drought. It’s been like that since they made camp here, and he doesn’t imagine it’ll change any time soon.

Helen waves a hand, clicking her tongue in dismissal.

“Time! It’s really not that important as a concept! I don’t understand why you insist on clinging to it!”

“Yes, you do. Just like I understand why you don’t.”

“Ah, yes.” Helen chuckles. Her lips are painted some unknowable colour, stark against her skin. “It’s in our natures, isn’t it, Archivist? You like to categorise, and I like nonsense.”

The tower on the horizon is beckoning. Jon isn’t fool enough to think he can resist its call; it isn’t as though he could resist the last time Jonah called him. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he crosses that threshold, but he doesn’t imagine that it’ll be kind.

“Exactly,” he agrees. “We are what we are, and there isn’t much we can do about that.”

“Such a pessimist. We’re always changing; always further and further from who we once were.”

“Nonsense,” Jon replies, just to hear Helen chuckle again.

Jon sits back, keeping one wary eye on Helen as he pulls Martin’s head back into his lap. Her expression filters into something like sympathy as she looks at the pair of them. She’s a known variable in a way that Michael has never been, but that doesn’t mean Jon is ever going to trust her.

“He won’t last forever, you know.  _ I _ don’t have any interest in hurting him, but there’s far more things than me in this world, and something will snap him up eventually.” 

“I won’t let anything take him.” 

Helen purses her lips, one eyebrow raised dubiously.

“I  _ won’t,” _ Jon snarls. “He’s not anyone’s to take. Not—” the wave of anger falters, “—not even me.” 

Something at the core of Jon yearns to pull Martin close, to catalogue and preserve him so nothing else can ever put its hands on him. But that would be wrong: Martin wouldn’t like it, and he wouldn’t be the same afterwards, so Jon won’t. 

Helen kneels down in front of him, her skirt unmarred by the dusty ground. She doesn’t get too close, and he feels a pathetic spark of gratitude for that.

“Some of the more human avatars are struggling,” she comments idly, tangling her fingers together. “Even that awful Fairchild man is finding this new world more than he’d bargained for.”

“But not us,” Jon murmurs, too tired to pretend that there’s anything human left under his skin.

“Mm. You and me — well, I’d wager we’re more fear than anything else.”

Jon finds himself laughing at that. After a moment, Helen laughs too. It’s more pleasant than Michael’s laugh, low and resonant as it echoes across the plains.

Martin groans in his sleep, the unmistakable sound of a man about to wake up. Jon glances down with a fond smile, brushing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. He’s so very human, and Jon loves him so much that he feels like his heart is going to burst.

When Jon looks back up, it’s Michael staring back at him, his face very close.

“Michael?”

“Helen is used to making the best of things, but me?” Michael’s palm cups the back of Jon’s head, heavy as concrete. He doesn’t pull him close, not exactly, but his touch weighs Jon down, irresistible as gravity. “I’m afraid I’m the jealous sort, Archivist.”

Michael’s lips press to Jon’s, bringing with them the taste of wine and bruises.

Jon’s eyes flicker shut, and for a few moments, all he knows is fractals.

“Just something to consider,” Helen says as she pulls back, patting him on the cheek with an absent smile. “So you know all your options.”

When that yellow door closes behind her, it is silent. Jon’s lips ache.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, you might enjoy [a sharp-set symmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1463362), a series of jon & helen / jon/helen fics i wrote during the late 140s. i just love them so much 😭
> 
> also, you can find me on tumblr at [screechfoxes](http://screechfoxes.tumblr.com/), although i only sometimes post about my fics on there. i hope you have a nice day!


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